Star Wars Jedi Knight IV: Sith Empire
by jk4sithempire
Summary: The galaxy is on the brink of another war. It has been two years since the destruction of the evil ABELOTH, and the NEW JEDI ORDER prepares to battle a previously unknown yet ancient threat, a planet full of Sith known as the LOST TRIBE.
1. Prologue

Prologue

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Head of State Vitor Reige was packing up his datapads from a meeting with the Moffs.

 _Childish. Just childish…_ he stewed as he stacked the tablets on the conference table.

They were squabbling, stealing each other's toys, making the girls cry, and scheming against their lucky "parent", Vitor Reige himself.

It blew his mind that Fel didn't go insane (or at least have a little more gray hair) from putting up with these children and pacifying them continually. Usually either with credits or more "toys" in the form of territory, Star Destroyer fleets, or any one or more of a million other things. And the sheer jealousy and outright greed! Life was simpler as an admiral. _Aye, sir. No, sir. Right away, sir._

And Reige had one person to blame for this mess: Luke Skywalker. Skywalker was the one whose bright idea it was to appoint women as Moffs. And they just loved sending little flirts over the table to get whatever they wanted, but they all wanted something different, usually conflicting. Though in all fairness, Skywalker also appointed Jagged Fel, the best boss Reige ever had. So maybe Luke wasn't that stupid after all…

Reige entered the corridor that led to his office. He was so infuriated he couldn't think straight.

 _Maybe I should just call it a night? Have a drink...or two..._

But drinking and sleeping didn't solve problems. They postponed them. And Reige wasn't about to let the Empire go down the Maw in an escape pod if he could help it.

He was at the door to his office now. He scanned his clearance card, and the door slid open.

"Vitor Reige, how nice to see you." said a dark-robed woman reclining with her feet on his desk. There was a scar on the left side of her mouth, but Reige couldn't see much more as a hood was obfuscating part of her face. She hardly looked twenty, which begged the question,

"Who _are_ you? And what the sithspit are you doing in my office?"

Then Reige got it, or so he thought. This was how the Moffs perceived him. An incompetent, unqualified lazy creep. Reige had had enough of the Moffs for one day. Or really for one lifetime.

"That's not the question you should be asking, and you know it. The question you should be asking is 'High Lady Khai, what do you want from me?' And the answer to that, my dear Reige, is _everything_. More than you could ever give. The only way I can get what I need is to take it."

"Security!" Reige shouted desperately, hopeful that the stormtrooper patrol would hear.

Two more dark robed figures came up behind Reige from either side of the corridor instead, boxing him in. Not the security he wanted.

"Why don't you come in, stay a while?" Lady Khai asked.

With an offer like that, how could Reige resist?

"You won't get away with this."

"I already have, Reige."

A hand fell on his shoulder and plopped him down in a chair in front of Lady Khai's desk. Being this close to her, Reige could have sworn the air around her was ten degrees colder. The hair on the back of his neck stood on end. There was something different about this Lady Khai, and Reige did not like it at all. As if in a final declaration of fate, the door to his office slid down.

"Your shikkar, Saber Rof."

Reige had no idea what a shikkar was, but unfortunately, he was about to find out. The dark figure to his left bowed his head and handed Lady Khai a thin glass knife that was even thinner near the handle. Reige started to sweat as he dreaded what would happen.

Lady Khai raked her thumb across the blade. From the grin on her face, Reige guessed it was sharp. The next thing he knew, there was a violent burning in his chest, and he fell to the deck with his warm blood pooling under him. As his vision faded, the last thing he saw was the grinning face of Vestara Khai as she stood over him, arms folded.

"Goodbye, Vitor Reige."


	2. Chapter 1 - Rude Awakening

Chapter 1

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Jan Ors couldn't fall asleep...something just didn't feel quite right. Her chrono read 0247. Not like it mattered, there was no "typical" day or night on Nar Shadaa—it was a constant cycle of eclipses from the planet Nal Hutta. There was just Galactic Standard Time. She tossed off the sheets and got up out of bed. She might as well get up, she thought. Maybe getting something to drink would calm her nerves enough to get some rest. That, or stay awake.

The apartment that served as her temporary lodging was small and quaint...and cheap. She walked up to the bar-like station that more or less served as her kitchen, turned on the light, grabbed a glass off a shelf, and went to the sink to fill it. Tapping the right side of the faucet, cold water trickled out into her glass. She touched the faucet again, and the stream stopped. Jan went to the single window in the place and looked out as she took a sip.

She started thinking of her mission here to this pit of the galaxy. Alpha Red, the nanovirus she and the Chiss concocted to fight the Yuuzhan Vong, had been warped to kill Boba Fett and his children. And the key to neutralize it, the Galactic Alliance believed, lay in a lab in the Nar Shaddaa undercity. The GA also had reason to believe that the Empire was directly involved.

Jan took another sip of water and looked out into the tangled mess of blocky buildings, pedbridges, bright holo adverts, control centers, and antennas that made up a faint silhouette in the dark Nar Shadda skyline.

A red beam pierced through the transparisteel window and hit her glass. The water was instantly vaporized, and the glass itself exploded sending white-hot shards in every direction pelting everything in the room, including her. The explosion sent her reeling backward, and bloodied her face from the shards of glass.

Eyes wide, and shaking in pure shock, Jan glanced at the window. The beam left a red-hot burn mark on the transparisteel. Disruptor.

Struggling and scrambling to stand, she darted to her kitchen bar and turned off the light. She just hoped the sniper wouldn't have an IR scope. Another red beam sliced through the room, picking off the faucet. A puff of steam came up from where it used to be, and water squirted into the air like a fountain.

"Why me?" Jan asked to herself, fumbling around in the dark feeling around for her pilot's vest and boots.

Another red beam sliced through the room. Jan found the vest and her boots and ducked behind a corner to put them on.

She was now hiding behind a wall putting on her jacket, checking her gear and snapping a power pak in her E-19 blaster rifle. She racked it with a reassuring _shuck-clack_. Next weapon: her lightsaber.

Her lightsaber wasn't with the rest of her gear, as she never used it. It was a souvenir from rescuing Kyle from a Sith cult on the planet Roon. The weapon was tucked away in a lock box under her bed, which was on the opposite side of her apartment. She would be shot at if she tried to get there.

Screw it. After she had locked the E-19 in her holster with a reassuring _click_ , she got a running start and made a jump for it. The red beam burst into the room, narrowly missing her right leg. Being a GA operative and the daughter of an Alderaanian choreographer, she was somewhat acrobatic. She had to be. Jan made a leap for it, and narrowly escaped being hit in the left leg by the beam.

She reached under her bed, pulled a durasteel box out, scanned her thumb on the lock, opened it, and grabbed the lightsaber. She cringed, and hit the activator switch. The red blade illuminated the room with an eerie glow. For her safety, she deactivated it and put it in a vest pocket. At least it still worked, and she didn't waste her time getting it. Another disruptor shot hit her bedsheets, instantly igniting them.

Jan needed to get out of this hellhole. She raced for the door, ducked as another red beam sang over her head, hit the button to open the door, spun to dodge another searing beam, and exited the deathtrap of an apartment. Her back against the wall outside her door which was now closing automatically, she slumped down to rest, and with any luck figure this whole mess out. It was then when Jan could see her bare legs that she realized that except for her pilot's vest and boots that she snagged on the way out that she hadn't exactly gotten dressed.

Jan let her head thump against the cold durasteel wall behind her.

"Of all the nights not to get any sleep." she mumbled.

Then she heard something. Repetitive clanking. Metal feet on the stairs were coming up, at least three pairs.

"Stang it all!" Jan said as she got up. She pulled a thermal detonator out from the inside of her vest, pulled the activator back to the 3, and tossed the beeping grenade down the stairway.

Ping, ping, _BOOM_.

A thermal detonator was one of the few weapons that could dramatically change the air pressure twice in a single second. Because of that, Jan's ears not only popped from the explosion, but were ringing.

Jan thought she heard a scream, but it sounded like it was through a helmet. She stopped short, unsure of whether to keep lobbing if they were Mandos or stop if they were stormtroopers.

In recent years, the Empire had come around. That was because Luke Skywalker had re-appointed the Moffs and Head of State. Now they were no worse than the Galactic Federation of Free Alliances (which they had even recently tried to join). And more than likely, stormtroopers meant help, and she would have been a fool turn it down.

Oddly relieved to see the white helmets she once despised, she put her second thermal detonator back.

"Sorry for the bomb, I thought you guys were out to kill me." she apologized.

"It's alright, Miss. Hands on your head." one replied as he stepped forward.

Jan was skeptical about why that was needed, but she did it to help ease tensions. She knew at any moment if anything went south she could quite easily turn the tables.

The stormtrooper proceeded to search what little she had on her and stripped her of any weapons. The other two stormtroopers that were left held blasters trained on her.

"Alright, let's see some ID." the apparent leader that now had all Jan's weapons said.

"I don't have it on me right now." she replied. "It's in my room back there."

"Fine. Give me your hand." he said as another trooper handed him a datapad.

Jan gave him her non-cybernetic left hand, which the stormtrooper scanned on the datapad.

"She's the one. Cuff her." he said.

That was going too far. Whatever she had done or was wanted for, the Empire was now public enemy number one. She let a roundhouse kick fly into the trooper with the stun cuffs, sending him skidding for a few feet. In the sudden commotion, she stripped another trooper of his T-21 blaster and bashed him in the head with the stock. It didn't do much except dent his helmet and send him reeling back into a wall, make him stagger, then fall over dazed wondering what the heck just happened. That gave her enough time to kick the last stormtrooper in the general area of his chin, ripping the helmet off his head and sending it bouncing off the ceiling and rolling on the floor. She shot him in the face. Brutal, but effective. The cuff trooper was now calling for backup, which Jan ended abruptly by saturating his shiny white suit with blaster bolts, eventually killing him. The last stormtrooper was getting up and starting to retreat, but Jan filled his back with shots before he could get three feet. He collapsed with a metallic clunk that sounded like a bag full of scrap metal dropping. Jan recovered her gear from him, as well as his comlink, and bolted down the stairs to the door out.

Jan needed to get to her ship, the _Raven's Claw_ yesterday. The hangar bay and starpad were just across from her apartment complex; she just needed to get there. No doubt there would be reinforcements waiting for her outside, ready and waiting to take pot shots at anything coming out of the building that didn't just go in, meaning her...because she was now "armed and dangerous." She needed a distraction, and her belt of thermal detonators would fit the bill. After tossing away the clumsy T-21, she set the timers on each of the four left on the belt to 5, 6, 7, and 8 seconds. That would send exploding bombs flying every which way to dazzle and hopefully shell-shock some of them while she darted out to the hangar bay. She got close enough to the exit door so that it opened in her presence, tossed the belt out, and at the first explosion Jan bolted through the door. The stormtroopers were dead ahead, guarding the entrance to the starpad. The bombs did their job and distracted them enough so that Jan could shoot a grappler at the top of the hangar. That caught the troopers' attention, but it was too late. Jan was already at the end of her swing and was using her legs to buffer the hit so she didn't smack into the wall too hard.

"Hey you! Stop!"

" _Don't_ let her get away!" Jan heard faintly below.

 _A little late for that_ Jan thought as she put her feet down precariously on a light fixture and retracted the grappler.

Then the stormtroopers began to open fire on her, peppering the wall now behind her with scorch marks. Jan wished she'd saved a thermal detonator. She reloaded the grappler, and shot it more or less straight up, but at enough of an angle that it stuck to the retractable roof of the starpad hangar. With her free right hand, she started firing back with her E-19 as the grappler lifted her to the roof.

There was a slight snag to this, however. Jan simply would not be able to hold onto the grappler as it rounded the corner onto the roof, and that meant she would have to let go of the grappler and straddle the roof, all the while trying not to get shot. Otherwise, she was in for a bone shattering five-story drop onto a hard durasteel pedbridge, if she landed on it at all.

She holstered her weapon immediately and when she came to the top, let go of the grappler and held onto the ledge for dear life while the stormtroopers below continued their assault, albeit inaccurately.

Jan swung her body over the top of the building and then discovered a new set of problems: the retractable roof was closed, and the drop into the hangar was the same drop she nearly faced a minute ago, albeit with a larger portion of solid ground to aim for. The solution to the first issue was fairly straightforward; she'd just cut a hole in the roof with her lightsaber. This particular issue posed problematic because the hot metal could either fall on her ship and, for her purposes, destroy it; or it could land on a fuel tank and leave nothing left of Jan or the hangar bay but a fond memory. There was, however, the off chance that the cutout wouldn't hit anything but the floor. And Jan needed to take the risk. After she had retrieved her grappler, she ignited her lightsaber and took an educated guess about where things should have been in the hangar. She took a breath and plunged the blade into the durasteel roof. After a minute or so of cutting, the cutout fell to the ground with a loud _KA-BANG_ , triggered the motion sensing lights, and apparently didn't hit anything too important. She returned the lightsaber to its pocket. Being extremely careful not to sear her arms on the still smoking metal, she reached around to the other side of the roof and attached the grappler. Jan let a few feet of slack out of the grappler and dropped herself through the hole. She was left swinging from the grappler, but she let some slack out and eventually descended safely to the ground.

Now she needed to get the kriff out of here before the stormtroopers found a way to get into the starpad.

Since she was on the wrong side of her ship, she needed to get to the side with the boarding ramp. As she hurried over to the ramp, she reeled in and pocketed her grappler. She stopped, looked, and listened. Nothing. Not even the stormies outside. It seemed quiet...way too quiet. She warily continued to the boarding ramp of the _Raven's Claw_ and readied her E-19. On the other side of her ship, she had a good look around and found nothing out of the ordinary.

She didn't dare holster the rifle, she merely held onto it with her right hand and used her left to key in the passcode and scan her thumb on the control pad. As the hydraulics that lowered the boarding ramp whined, a blood-red blade snapped to life less than an inch away from her throat.

"I really thought you'd be smarter than that, Ors." a female voice said behind her. "I also thought you'd be... _taller_. I guess legends give you that impression."

As metal boots plinked against the durasteel—stormtroopers Jan was guessing—she started to seethe in rage. She had walked into an ambush like a karking fool. But she certainly wouldn't die like one. It didn't make any sense... _any_ of it.

"Drop the blaster. _Now_." the voice said.

Jan reluctantly obeyed, and the E-19 clattered to the ground. But that was as far as her docility went. She kicked the female fighter behind her and sent the woman stumbling back. Jan ducked so her head wouldn't be lopped off by the blade that followed Jan's assailant away, then released a hard roundhouse kick to her left, connecting with the stranger's neck. On an ordinary person, almost no matter who it was, a kick that hard would have snapped it like a dry twig. But the dark-robed woman just rolled and stumbled, dazed and baffled at how fast the tables turned.

The stormtroopers—Jan counted five—opened fire, and she ducked behind the boarding ramp and started picking off the stormies one by one with her E-19. The last one got a chance to run out a service door. It didn't matter. Jan needed to finish off the woman with the lightsaber...who was now gone without a trace. A Force blast suddenly hit Jan in the small of the back and sent her tumbling across the durasteel floor and away from her ship. Still skidding she opened automatic fire on the woman, who turned and deflected the shots with the bare palm of her hand. And while it was still stretched out, she summoned Jan's blaster pistol to herself.

It was then that Jan saw a face that was described so many times in the GAI reports. The scar across the left side of the mouth was unmistakable. Vestara Khai. Offhand, she was the single most dangerous person in the galaxy that Jan knew of, second only to Boba Fett, Kyle Katarn, and herself. The scary thing was there was a whole planet somewhere out there with more Sith just like her. As Jan stood up to face her, she noticed that the "little" whelp was taller than she was. It wasn't surprising, at a mere 1.6 meters Jan was considered by most beings to be short.

"Now, Ors, this can end one of two ways. Decide now." Khai said cockily... _too_ cockily. Jan was betting the last thing Khai would expect was a rush attack: Jan had no weapons, it would be laughable. So she pulled out her grappler and rushed Khai, who was now jumping straight up. Too late, though. Jan's grappler snagged Vestara's leg, and with a crack-pop the expanding tip of the grappler shattered her shin bone, sending down a spray of blood. As her ascent stopped, Khai let out a bloodcurdling wail, then hit the ground with a hard thud and was quiet, while the slack grappler cord fell on top of her motionless body. If it weren't for a muffled moan, Jan would have thought she was dead.

"Three, actually." Jan replied to the moaning, crumpled form of Vestara Khai.

As much as Jan wanted her blaster rifle back, she knew better than to approach Khai unless she was prepared to kill her on the spot. Jan had no safe means to do that, even in her pathetic state, so Jan's life for a blaster wasn't a bad trade at all. Instead, she gave the girl something to keep her busy as she took off in the _Claw_.

As much as it seemed cruel, Jan had no better options. She set the grappler to retract. It would be like a ticking time-bomb of unimaginable pain, assuming she didn't pass out first. Eventually, when it got to Vestara's leg, it would rip out the grappler tip that stuck in the girl's shin bone, and take some bone and flesh with it. It was the only way to ensure Jan's safety long enough to escape Nar Shadaa. She dropped the instrument and watched it slither over to the dark heap.

As Jan turned and stepped onto the boarding ramp, however, a glass knife sliced through her left shoulder blade, then hit the hull of the _Raven's Claw_ and exploded. Jan stumbled, but managed to run up the ramp and into her ship, then closed the ramp.

The two massive ion engines of the _Raven's Claw_ , each one larger than the belly and cockpit combined, fired up. Under normal circumstances, someone as close to the ship as Vestara was would have been deafened. But the sound on the enclosed starpad echoed, taking the it from deafening to head-shattering.

Something else that was head-shattering was Vestara's pain. The grappler in her shin muted the blinding pain from the broken bones from the fall. Calling on the Force, just to keep her conscious, she reached a shaking hand for her lightsaber, ignited it, and cut the cord to the grappler.

The retractable ceiling was now fully retracted, and the _Claw_ bolted into the dark sky of Nar Shadaa.

Jan didn't expect the battle to be over. Not by a long shot. Part of what made Vestara Khai so dangerous was the Sith meditation sphere, commonly referred to as Ship. Khai and this... _thing_ were more or less inseparable, from what Jan heard. So it was a safe bet that wherever Khai was, Ship would be waiting to help.

Now Jan hardly knew what to expect. Unlike the _Raven's Claw_ , a descriptive name that depicted the sleek black courier ship armed to the teeth and had a beak-like cockpit in the front, Ship was pretty nondescript. All she knew about Ship was that Jaina Solo, Sword of the Jedi, known for her unshakable resolve, quick and sound thinking, and...well...violence...was flying a Galactic Alliance troop transport, and fought Ship to a standstill in the Maw. And that was a terrifying thought. It wasn't that Jan was a bad pilot. To the contrary she was phenomenal. But the _Raven's Claw_ wasn't anywhere near as rigid and armored as a GA troop transport. That was why she started Kyle's droid WeeGee and the navcomp working on calculating the jump to hyperspace as she was lifting off. She just needed to get to the coordinates she calculated from, which would be on her current trajectory. With any luck, she would escape before she had the displeasure of meeting Ship.

Something else concerned Jan. The Empire was somehow is in cahoots with Vestara, maybe even the Sith at large. The absolute last thing Jan wanted to run into right now was an Imperial fleet.

The short range scanner started beeping and showed a red blip near the top edge. Since Jan didn't speak WeeGee's language of droidspeak, the upside-down U-shaped droid plugged into a wall socket and transmitted a message to Jan.

BOGIE APPROACHING AT BEARING 353 MARK 2. SEEMS TO BE BIOLOGICAL, NOT MECHANICAL. 84.7% CHANCE IT'S SHIP.

Here we go. Jan thought to herself.

"Start up the shield generator and send all available energy to the forward deflectors." Jan commanded. "And prepare for evasive maneuvers."

Jan armed the missile systems, and the belly mounted laser cannons, which were rapid-fire guns scrapped from a crashed V-Wing. These guns could destroy most anything that you aimed them at in a matter of three seconds or so. The only con was that they tended to overheat if you fired a burst longer than that, and they required a few seconds to cool off before they melted down and blew up.

The HUD on the glass of the cockpit lit up with a reticle, a small red square around the speck that was Ship, and a green diamond-shaped target where she needed to aim if she were to hit the meditation sphere. At the moment, the indicator and the target were overlapping because Ship was headed straight towards them.

On the control panel, a pulsing green outline appeared around the front of an image of the _Raven's Claw_. The shields were up.

Jan let off a two-second burst in the target area and squeezed off three of her four low-yeild baradium missiles. Ship fired it's plasma cannons in an attempt to either envelop the rockets or use them to ignite the plasma that Jan would fly into; Jan couldn't tell, and it didn't matter much. The missiles intelligently dodged the plasma and sung past Ship. They turned around and began to chase Ship and pin it between themselves and the _Raven's Claw_. Ship continued firing, and Jan kept dodging and shooting, occasionally hitting Ship. Once Jan got a target lock with the laser cannons, she set them to auto-fire mode while she focused on getting to the coordinates and got close to the right heading. Ship was approaching still, not veering off coarse. The plasma started to hit the _Raven's Claw_ , harmlessly flying off the front end while the deflector shields held around 85%.

Jan pushed the throttle to the overload stops and prepared to slip under the ugly form of Ship and go to hyperspace. As the baradium missiles got closer, it appeared Ship took them more seriously. It seemed as if Ship were now aiming to hit the _Claw_...as if to say " _If I'm going down I'm going to take you with me."_

Shields at 31% now, Jan bit her lip and ripped the yoke to the left. It felt like the right thing to do. She was suddenly clear as all four roared and zipped by over the cockpit. How she managed to avoid hitting Ship or her baradium missiles, she did not know. She looked at the monitor for the aft cam and saw the missiles accelerate as they were now clear of their sender, and converged on Ship with a series of bright white explosions that caused the _Claw_ to buck and shudder. The red blip vanished from the short range sensor readings as a red circle emanated from it, and it vanished with a beep. Whether that meant Ship was blown out of recognition or destroyed, Jan didn't have the time or desire to find out. She was approaching the set coordinates to go to hyperspace, and when she reached them, she started the hyperdrive.

WeeGee let out a string of beeps and whistles, which the _Claw_ 's central computer interpreted on a screen on the pilot's control panel.

MISTRESS ORS, WHEN DID YOU PLAN TO TREAT YOUR INJURIES?

Jan, who had by now gotten something more on and was supervising sensor readouts, nearly forgot she was injured at all, which in all likelihood meant it wasn't that bad. She would treat them with bacta later so they wouldn't get infected, but she was more or less fine.

"No, I'm fine for now, Weeg." Jan replied. "But I do need you to record a holo transmission and send it to the GA as soon as we approach a beacon." She took one last look at the black and blue swirling miasma that was a hyperspace path, and got up and walked beside the droid to the belly of the ship. Here the constant droning of the two engines was loudest, and there was a slight vibration in the small room. Two bunks were both folded neatly into opposite walls, a table was likewise, and a floor panel was missing, exposing a spur-of-the-moment but tidy welding job on some deflector coils. Three E-19 blasters and three cases of blaster cartridges were neatly stacked in a wall-mounted cabinet, and nearby there was an energy outlet to recharge one's weapons and personal shielding equipment from the ship's fusion core. Jan stood at the far end of the room, and WeeGee hovered just out of the doorway to the cockpit. Jan sent a small hand signal, and WeeGee started recording in full holo with his two photoreceptors.

"This is Galactic Alliance agent GA-3113 reporting en route to Coruscant from Nar Shadaa." Jan started. "I've just narrowly escaped an assassination attempt in my apartment in the west residential sector. I was first shot at in my kitchen with a disruptor, then confronted with hostile, repeat _hostile_ stormtroopers waiting for me outside. They had locked down the starpad and ambushed me like a karking fool at my ship. The leader appeared to be, as near as I could tell, Vestara Khai. I left her severely wounded and incapacitated, maybe dead. The Sith meditation sphere Ship was waiting for me in orbit, and I cannot confirm whether I destroyed it or not. All I can say is I've escaped with my life. As much as I don't like the prospects and find it highly unlikely, we may have another Sith Empire on our hands. I would advise evacuation of all GA agents and officials on Nar Shadaa or in the vicinity of any Imperial territory or vessels. Status nova gamma, Ors out." Jan said, signaling again for the droid to stop.

"Oh, and send that to Kyle too, will you?" she asked. WeeGee's affirmative whistle answered her. "I have a bad feeling about this."


	3. Chapter 2 - Menace

Chapter 2

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Vestara Khai opened her eyes to the sight of the dark gray ceiling of the medbay on an Imperial Star Destroyer. She was lying flat on a gurney there, and had most likely been out for quite a while, weeks maybe. The pain had nearly subsided, though there was still a dull throb in her right leg from the knee down. She reached out in the Force, probing if she'd been captured by the Jedi, and if she could sense Ship in the hangar. She didn't sense either.

She yanked the IV's out of her arm and started to stand gingerly. Her right leg felt weird, as if she'd never learned how to use it. But it felt strong, maybe stronger than it was originally.

After gimping to the closest locker, she was guessing it had her things in it, an Em-Dee droid walked up.

"I take it you are feeling better, Lady Khai?" it inquired politely, yet obviously couldn't care less as it was a droid.

"Somewhat." she replied bitterly, her mind was still on that sleemo Ors. "Did Ors get away alive?"

"I don't know, Lady Khai." the droid responded, trying to be somewhat helpful if at all possible. "I wasn't informed. But Head of State Reige wanted to see you immediately about that as soon as you had awakened."

The droid had no idea, but "Reige" wasn't the same as Reige. "Reige" was a fourth-generation biot, combining Kaminoan cloning techniques with the Qreph's biot technology. The real Reige, of course, was dead.

"Good. And what the stang happened to my leg, anyway?"

"We were unable to save it. You are standing on a cybernetic prosthetic."

Khai shook her head. Incompetent droids. There was no point now in having them scrapped, her leg was already gone. And, honestly, in all likelihood it was the best option.

"Tell Reige I'll be there." she said as she walked out, somewhat awkwardly.

"Ah, Lady Khai." Reige the biot greeted.

"Is that sleemo Ors dead?" Khai demanded.

"Umm...well..."

"Well what?"

"No." Reige said, hands behind his back and hanging his head.

Vestara's eyes bulged in disbelief as she glowered, mouth agape, at Reige. But before she bit his head off, Reige continued.

"On her way off the planet she...she managed to destroy Ship. We found radioactive fragments of it that suggest baradium missiles were used against it. I'm very sorry."

Khai was speechless. She was fuming, but she couldn't make out any words. Her mouth just hung open, and her eyes bulged.

"Where was that blockade I ordered?!"

"It was on the other side of the planet. Ors took a different trajectory than we expected."

"That's impossible and you know it." she said, trying to keep her composure. "I'll give you one more chance. _What happened_?"

"I am telling the truth, m'lady." Reige replied, choking down a knot in his throat.

"Based on her trajectory, where was she headed?" Khai snapped, sensing the truth and nervousness in Reige's Force aura.

"Somewhere in the inner rim, likely Coruscant."

"Then we may still have a chance. When will the navy be there?"

"In about three days. The Bloodfin had some hyperdrive issues, but they have been resolved. It delayed the arrival eight Galactic Standard hours."

"What about the Sith fleet?"

"Due to the technical issues with the Bloodfin, I had to set the Sith fleet as the main attack force, using the _Taalon_ as the lead frigate. Our Imperial forces should arrive as reinforcements less than eight Galactic Standard hours later."

"Your wit has just saved your life, Reige. Don't disappoint me again, or no force or power in the galaxy will be able to spare it. And that's a promise."

"Yes, m'lady."

"Are you sure it was Vestara Khai?" Jedi Master Corran Horn asked, his strong voice echoing off the stone walls in the Council chamber. "I mean, you've never seen the girl."

"With all due respect Master Horn, I've heard descriptions of her and I saw the holo of her throwing the bomb at the Allana Solo." a larger-than-life holographic head of Jan Ors said, positioned in the middle of the Council chamber. "I'm as sure as I can reasonably be about it."

"Jan, it's not that we don't believe you," Grand Master Katarn started, "but there's just no way Vestara Khai would have let you destroy her like that. It seems too good to be true. You may have _saw_ her, but there's no way you fought her...and won. Plus, if the Empire was involved, you never would have gotten off Nar Shadaa in once particle. Khai's a match for Skywalker, and she would have destroyed you with a thought."

"Then why am I not being swept up off the floor by a custodian droid right now?"

"Agent Ors, do you have any idea what your midi-chlorian count is?" Master Cilghal inquired, in her gravelly voice, which sounded like a human talking and gargling at the same time.

"I never thought to check, and until recently would have thought it was pretty low. The blood test for the Alliance wasn't testing for that, so I have no idea."

"Would it be out of the question for you to come to the Academy, at least for a day or two?" Kyle asked. "It'd be a lot easier to sort this out, and it would give us a better idea of what we're up against."

Jan appeared to be looking down at instrumentation, looked up past the photoreceptor, and her eyes got wide.

"Sorry, gotta go..." she started, but her hologram flickered faded out before she could finish.

Jan had just gotten out of hyperspace, and was welcomed to Coruscant space with flashing warning lights and klaxons sounding. The automatic shield control kicked in, sensing blaster fire, and was immediately deflecting shots. In between the flashing of the shields blocking shots, Jan made out Imperial Star Destroyers, not the little Victory class tubs, the big ones, the Executor-class beasts, along with a slew of dark looking ships that looked like a Victory cracked in half the long way. They were fighting GA battle frigates in orbit around Coruscant. In a sudden flash, one of the GA ships vanished in a blinding white plume which shook the _Raven's Claw_ violently.

"Start verbose sensor logs and calculate a hyperspace jump to Shedu Maad." Jan commanded WeeGee, which was observing the chaos from behind her. A quick check to the HUD revealed that the shields were being hit faster than the generator could keep up. In no time, she'd be dead in the water, or worse...just plain _dead_.

She switched on manual control and began evasive maneuvers. The effect on the shields was marginal. By now, several squadrons of TIE Defenders were chasing the _Claw_ and showering down relentless torrents. A massive red bolt sang over the cockpit, and more klaxons sounded, indicating yet another foreign target lock. This time, it was from a Star Destroyer.

"What the _hell_?!" Jan shouted in futility at the sudden shot from the Executor-class frigate.

She pushed the throttle into the overload zone, set the V-Wing guns to auto-fire, and jerked the yoke away from the mass of energy and war machines. The ship didn't follow. Instead the engines groaned and the body of the ship creaked as it twisted. Jan looked at the overwhelming amount of warning signs on the HUD, and sure enough, third from the bottom was a tractor beam alert.

"Weeg, can we pull off a polarization of the hull?"

WeeGee's response rolled out across one of the screens on the control panel:

THE SHIELD GENERATOR IS ON THE VERGE OF A MELTDOWN. THE SHORT ANSWER IS NO.

Jan didn't believe in the no-win scenario. There was always a way to win. They key, she believed, was to never stop fighting.

"Alright," Jan said nonchalantly, kicking back in the pilot's seat and folding her arms. "I'll play along for a while. Weeg, wipe the logs for the past week, stop the guns, and cut the shields."

Then she had a novel idea.

"Scratch that Weeg." Jan said as she hit some buttons on the control panel, killing the engines, shields, and weapons systems. She then got up out of the pilot's seat and drew her blaster pistol. In the belly of the ship, she estimated where the mounts for the engines ought to be welded on, then shot her determined spot with the pistol, leaving a scorch mark on the bulkheads on each side. Then she dug out a magnetically sealed case full of thermal detonator charges out from a ceiling mounted shelving system. She mounted these charges on the areas she blasted, arming them, but not setting the timer. She retrieved another case from the same shelf, this one full of trip mines, and set those so that the first thing that walked up the ramp and into the ship would set the trip mines off, which would in turn set the thermal charges off, blowing the mounts to the engines. Perfect. Almost. She wasn't done yet.

The fusion core was next on Jan's list to blow up. This was trickier, because not only was it not easily accessible, but it was also unimaginably hot. It would, however, be a very rewarding explosion. She would have to do this from the cockpit.

Stepping into the rather cramped cockpit again, she saw that one of the Star Destroyers was now looming in front of the transparisteel viewscreen. Her time was quickly running out.

After a moment of hacking away furiously at the ship's computer console, she managed to trigger the fusion core explosion via a comlink command. And she also made sure the engines would engage at full throttle at another console command.

All too soon the Raven's Claw was being pulled into one of the massive port hangar bays of the dreadnought. Jan sealed the cockpit off from the rest of the ship, and waited until the ship was let down on the landing struts. She heard the stormtroopers outside fiddling with the boarding ramp's external controls. They sounded like they were having a hard time, so after a deep breath, Jan helped them out by lowering the ramp and opening the door. This was the moment of truth.

There were a couple of small explosions, then they were joined by several larger ones. Jan gunned the engines, which broke off of the vessel, taking the rear landing gear with them and shot around the hangar like untied balloons. First one, then the other hit something or another and blew up in fiery explosions, punching holes in the durasteel walls large enough to fly an X-Wing through. Why was it with every Sith lord that picked a fight with Kyle and Jan that they lost their only ship in an explosion? At least this time it was on purpose.

While the bewildered stormtroopers were frantically assessing the situation and calling for help, Jan had cut her way out of the side of the cockpit with her lightsaber and was running for her life through one of the newly blasted holes.

"Hey you! Halt or I'll shoot!" echoed across the hangar, but it was too late. Jan disappeared into the frigate before he could even take aim.

"What the stang is it this time, Reige?" Vestara Khai questioned, storming across the bridge to where Vitor Reige the biot was standing. She was growing very impatient with all the things that suddenly seemed to be going wrong and holding her from going to Kesh.

"We are receiving numerous reports of a... _fusion_ _explosion_ from hangar bay B-4." he said, reading a datapad. His voice was partially drowned out by the droning of Imperial klaxons.

"Can we still get to Kesh?"

"Not in this ship. It blew a hole out of our port side the size of a _Victory_. Going to hyperspace would rip us apart."

"And let me guess: Ors escaped."

"Well, _escaped_ is a rather strong word..."

"Then what the _kriff_ did happen?"

"She is still aboard, but we have no clue where."

"Make it a top priority to have her in solitary in exactly one hour, or you'll have a lot more to worry about than a refugee from the pit of the galaxy."

"Aye, m'lady."

Vestara shook her head. This Reige was so... _naive_ , and he had been subject to various experimental intelligence improvements. Good thing she had another biot in the works using a different mental enhancement method, because it didn't look like "Reige" was going to be along for the ride much longer. She just hoped the one being grown right now was actually more competent.

While Reige was wasting his time searching for Ors, Vestara was going to examine the site of the fusion explosion herself.

Thankfully for Jan, ever since Luke appointed female Moffs, women were more prominent in the Empire. Not so much in the stormtrooper corps, but most certainly officers. And that gave her a good chance of finding someone about her size to nick some fatigues.

She was stalking a female officer now, and had just followed her to a nice quiet spot. Perfect. So far, this accidental infiltration of the dreadnought was proving to be a mild success.

Jan saw her opportunity to strike, and took it. Bashing the woman over the head with the barrel of an E-19 blaster, Jan knocked the officer unconscious, and dragged her victim to a dark crevice.

Unfortunately the cap got soiled in Jan's assault, and walking around with a bloody cap would get attention. And on the flip side, walking around with no cap would get attention. Jan would worry about that in just a...

"What the sithspit are you doing here out of proper uniform?" a gruff voice broke in from behind her as she was buttoning up a cuff. Thankfully he didn't see the body shoved in a dark corner.

"You women were trouble from the very beginning. Look at you! You're a disgrace to the Empire!"

 _Well you've sure got a lot of gall walking up to me like that…_ Jan thought to herself as she turned to face her scolder. He was a middle-aged officer, a lieutenant to be exact. He was clean shaven, and obviously from the scars on his face, he'd seen a battle or two.

"I'll see to it that you're reprimanded for this. You little bi—"

His curse was cut off by Jan's shiny new jackboot cracking across his face, sending him down and his cap up. Jan caught it, shook it, and snugged it down on her head. A perfect fit.

"That'll teach you to call people dirty names... _scumbag_." Jan said to the body on the floor, staring up into oblivion.

She finished buttoning up her new uniform, and proceeded to explore the ship. She decided to go to the bridge, maybe from there she could get wind of what the crew's plans were regarding the explosion in the hangar bay. In all the chaos, they probably wouldn't even recognize her lack of clearance.

At a three-way intersection, there was a turbolift. All was quiet, nobody to be seen or heard for at least a hundred meters in all three directions. It was too quiet. She stepped onto the lift, and as her finger was about to press the button for the bridge, she saw that over half the panel was grayed out, about a hundred decks. The stang? Jan was pretty sure her explosion wasn't quite that big. The button below the grayed out section read BIOT FACILITY. Interesting. Maybe she could turn an accidental boarding into a fruitful covert mission after all. Jan pressed the button, the doors slid shut, and she was whisked to the "biot facility", whatever that was.

"What do you say Master Fel?" Corran Horn asked.

"With all due respect Master Horn, what I'm thinking isn't very Jedi-like right now." Jaina said, stewing and watching her own stormy complexion in the polished stone floor of the Council Chamber with her arms folded. Kyle for the most part understood. Vestara had tried to murder Jania's 7-year-old niece with a thermal detonator. Kyle's hit was much harder and a little closer to home when Jerec butchered his father and had his head on a pike in the Baron's Hed spaceport.

"Jaina, you have a right to be angry...but believe us when we say you don't want to feed that emotion." Kyle said. Although Jaina was greatly affected by her brother Jacen's fall to the dark side, she wasn't "there and back" like himself, Kyp Durron, and the Skywalker family had. And the absolute last thing the Jedi Order needed was for the Sword of the Jedi to go rogue...especially if it was Jaina.

"I agree. And Vestara didn't kill Allana," Kyp piped in. "I think that can be forgiven. I went on a wild rampage killing Imperials...and look where I am now."

Kyle's comlink started beeping.

"Oh, uh, excuse me." he said as he got up and left the council chamber.

"Katarn here, go ahead."

"You're not Luke." It was Han Solo.

"That's right. He didn't tell you?"

Silence.

"That old coot doesn't tell me anything except how 'weathered' I'm looking." Han said. "What happened?"

"He retired. He's home on Tattooine, back at Obi-Wan's old place."

"How nice of him to tell me." Han retorted sarcastically. "You got his comm frequency?"

"Yeah. It's...uh...I know this...842.450.3."

"You're sure?"

"No, but Lando'd probably bet on it."

"That's good enough for me, kid. Thanks, Solo out."

"Uh Han?"

"Make it quick."

"I wasn't going to tell you until we were completely sure, but it looks like we've found Vestara Khai. Again."

Han let out a long string of Correlian curses, many of which Kyle didn't even know existed until just now.

"What the kriff's that little smooka doing this time?"

"Well, she's assumed control of some Imperial forces so far, but from what we can tell she may be in control of the whole Empire."

Silence, then Han let out another string of curses.

"I swear I'm going to kill that little whelp!"

"No you're not. By now she's probably got the entire Lost Tribe on her side, along with the Empire."

Kyle let that sink in a minute. Han probably needed it.

"Hey, Booster, how's it goin' ol' buddy?" Lando asked a holo of Booster Terrik being projected up from his black marble desk.

Booster sighed. "I wish I could say it was going well. I've got some serious problems, Lando."

"Well you came to the right person!" Lando half-joked. "For you, all problem-solving equipment is 10% off."

This failed to make Booster laugh, much less bring a smile to his face. Lando stroked his chin.

"I see...well what did you have in mind Booster?"

"Something that can blast Sith to oblivion."

"Would a shipment of my new 9's suit your...needs?"

"I guess that depends, Lando. How much to a shipment?"

"Two-fifty."

Booster did some quick math in his head.

"Eh, yeah, I'll need about forty o' those."

Lando was sipping some caf as Booster said this, and immediately spewed it through Booster's hologram in surprise.

"Forty? That's... _ten thousand_ YVH droids, Booster! One of those babies can easily mop up a garrison Sith and come back for more."

"Yup."

"'Yup'?! Don't you think that might be a little...I dunno, _overkill_?" Lando said with a look of disbelief on his face.

"Lando, these are Sith. After what that _thing_ did to Coruscant, I don't want to take any chances."

Of course, Booster was talking about Abeloth wiping out over half of Coruscant's population.

"I hear ya buddy...but... _ten thousand_?" Lando shook his head.

"And would it be too much to ask to have them tomorrow?"

Lando was at a loss for words. He finally choked down a sip of caf and responded.

"Ep...what? I like to deal Booster, but that's just unreasonable. I came up with these bad boys just three months ago. I mass-produce, but nothing quite like that! I've also got quite a few pre-orders from sleemos all over the galaxy. They're my second best customers!"

"When's the soonest, then?"

"Eh, maybe a week...with a 15% surcharge."

"What happened to my discount?"

"It's normally 25, Booster."

Terrik sighed. Lando caught a faint look of betrayal on his face as he flicked an eye to his right.

"And that's how much, Lando?"

"Well, let's see..." Lando said as he punched keys on a datapad.

"Yeah," he said raising and eyebrow. "One billion one hundred fifteen million credits...payable immediately."

Lando expected Booster to back off. He was the only civilian Lando knew of with a Star Destroyer to his name, but even considering that it was probably way too rich for him.

"I'll pay it."

Lando was immediately skeptical as to who put Booster up to this, but kept his treacherous warm smile and cool sabacc face.

"Now we're talkin'!"

Kyle and Ben landed their Jedi StealthX fighters in hangar bay on Mos Eisley.

"Alright," Kyle said as the pair walked to the exit. "To find your—"

"Hey! Whewe you go? You no pay?" the voice of a Rodian echoed in the partially open hangar. Kyle rolled his eyes and turned to see his accuser.

He was an older Rodian, an antennae sagging on his left side.

"Um, okay." Kyle answered. "How much?"

"Ten thousand."

That was just ridiculous.

"You don't want to rip me off." Kyle said, subtly waving a hand.

"I no wanna wip you off."

"You want to go home and rethink your life."

"I wanna go home and wethink my wife."

"Have a nice day."

"Have nice day." the Rodian repeated as he waved, turned, and walked away.

Kyle turned around to walk out of the hangar with Ben.

"Was that...right?" Ben asked.

"Well considering he was trying to rob me of something I didn't have, I'd say that was the most peaceful and mutually beneficial way to defuse it. Why, did you have something to add?" Kyle asked as he took note of their hangar number, 218.

Ben shook his head. _Cheating the thief_ …it still sounded wrong. The alternative to the mind trick was to just shoot the guy, and that didn't seem right either...though his uncle Han probably would have argued otherwise.

Since Mos Eisley was a hub for smugglers, the cantina was fairly close to the hangars, within just a few blocks. It was a short walk, but it was made longer by street vendors vying for their nonexistent money. Finally they came to the door of the cantina, and stepped into the smoky bar. Kyle looked around. No sign of Luke. There was no point in looking for sketchy characters, they were _all_ sketchy. It was the perfect place for a Sith spy to hide and Kyle didn't like that one bit.

"I guess we should stop blocking the door and find a seat while we wait." Kyle said as he stepped aside to let a Trandoshan bounty hunter out.

Kyle and Ben took a seat near the back of the cantina in a corner, where they were not only less likely to be seen, but easier for them to see every life form that stepped foot into the bar.

Fifteen minutes passed. A Rodian came in, two human bounty hunters left, and a Weequay and several Grans left as well. Kyle checked his chrono. 1518. Luke had agreed to meet them there at 1500.

"Are you sure you heard _fifteen_ hundred hours local time?" Ben asked.

"I had him say it twice, I'm pretty sure." Kyle responded. "You think he could have misspoke?"

"If you're sure he said it, that's what he meant."

Kyle shook his head and leaned back in his chair.

"I smell something rotten here. Listen, you stay here. If Luke does show up, comm me. I'm going to Obi-Wan's place, it's possible something happened he didn't feel comfortable talking about over comlink."

"That's nice and everything, but I'm pretty sure this cantina _does_ close at some point. You're going to be gone at least overnight."

"Not on a swoop." Kyle said as he stood up. As he walked out, the Rodian that came in earlier eyed him warily. Kyle didn't pay him too much heed, he could have looked like someone on a wanted flimsi. It was just the way Tatooine worked.

After a few minutes in the relatively cool cantina, the mid-afternoon heat hit Kyle like a brick wall. It was breathtaking. He surveyed the street, the merchants, and the patrons of Mos Eisley. All sketchy to some extent or another. Most of the merchants were probably selling contraband, and a lot of the pilots were smugglers and bounty hunters. There was no way to get across the Jundland Wastes in any reasonable amount of time without a swoop. It shouldn't be hard, ever since podracing was banned by the Empire swoop racing more or less replaced it. He just needed to find a track. Where there was a track, there were swoops. And lucky for him, cantinas attracted swoop gangs.


End file.
